Christopher
by theroyalladybug
Summary: Christopher had always loved things and people easily. Of course, the attic changed that. From Christopher's perspective.


As a child, you will love easily. You will love your books, your first Fischer Price doctor kit, your bed, your sneakers, and your games. You will love your teachers, your bus drivers, your classmates, your father, your sisters, and your brother. Most of all, you will love your mother with her soft hugs and gentle perfume. You will love her most.

For a long time, you will refuse to admit that she has stopped loving you. Even as you starve, even as you pale, even as you bleed, you love your mother. You will endure the attic for her, sacrifice for her, and when she caresses your cheek, you can smell her perfume.

You will breathe through the pain and fear, and study. Medicine feels so _right_ to you: it's hard, but the good kind of hard. You need a challenge, you need to stay active or you will go crazy in the attic. Cathy has ballet and you have medicine. You have futures. Mother will fight for your futures, you know it.

When mother slaps you, it doesn't hurt. You have a new definition of what hurts and what doesn't-this doesn't. But you know that a line has been drawn that cannot be erased with you, Cathy, and the twins on one side, and your mother and grandmother on the other. But you love your mother, and think she loves you-you justify her over and over and over. She was scared, she wants what's best, she didn't want Grandmother to catch you and hurt you worse…it almost works.

Mother doesn't visit for months. You will become more than an older brother, you will become a parent to Cory and Carrie. You will feel yourself becoming more than a brother to Cathy, who has grown bitter and beautiful trapped with you. You will find it hard to study if she practices ballet in the same room, and soon you begin to have dreams that make it hard to talk to her in the morning. You will not notice Cathy's sudden shyness and blushing.

One day, you see her and cannot look away. Your sister, who has become more than your sister, has stepped out of the bath and is admiring herself. You cannot blame her-but Grandmother walks in and screams. You brace yourself for a whipping, but she shoves a pair of shears and your head and demands that you cut off Cathy's hair. She will call you a sinner, an abomination, the child of the devil and she will call Cathy a slut. You will break for the first time since you arrived and yell back at your Grandmother, who you never loved, and say no.

She starves you out as punishment. Mother doesn't come. You will double over in hunger as the twins eat the last of the food. Mother doesn't come. You will cut your arm and feed your blood to the twins. Mother doesn't come. You can't remember what her perfume smelled like.

In the end, Grandmother wins. You cut the tar out of Cathy's hair and try to ignore how beautiful her neck is, how beautiful her shoulders are, how beautiful her back is. She leans back against you when you are done, and turns towards you, asking if she is still pretty. She's so warm. But she is your sister, and you turn away.

Mother returns, glowing. She's been on a honeymoon. You remember the time when Cory was sick for over a week and you couldn't find anything in your books that matched the symptoms. She's so in love. You think about how your back will always be scarred. She went to Paris. You remember banging on the door, screaming when Grandmother separated you and Cathy.

You still love her, and you hate that you do. You know Cathy doesn't, that Cathy hates Corrine. (You will also begin thinking of her as Corrine instead of mother). But you are angry and demand to leave. Corrine cries and refuses to visit them until they apologize.

You will kiss Cathy, and she will kiss you back. You will fall in love with her. In your heart of hearts, you think of her as your wife. You begin imagining your life outside the attic. You dream of you and Cathy taking the twins to school and living in a small, yellow house in Florida. You dream of teaching the twins to swim in the wide open ocean, and seeing Cathy in a swimsuit. You dream of seeing Cathy perform, you dream of Cathy kissing you as you graduate.

You realize that Corrine has no place in your dreams. You realize that nobody outside of your siblings has any place in these dreams. You think you will never love anybody new again. You will be wrong.

You will find out that your wife has gone into labor in the middle of surgery, but luckily it's a simple appendectomy, so you make one of your residents finish. You race through the hospital until you find Cathy, screaming. It takes longer than normal, but she arrives, bloody and screaming. Cathy cries as she holds her, and you are frozen with fear and love.


End file.
